Singh is king or sin is king?

If last week���s events made the nation, bar its political class, hang its head in collective shame, the reason is two-fold. One, the unseemly sight of the no-holds barred conduct of its elected representatives and two, despair over its ability to do anything about it, best reflected in Prime Minister���s Manmohan Singh���s challenge to his opponents to prove their allegations of horse-trading.

The BJP made a crude attempt to do so, three of its MPs brandishing bank notes they had allegedly received as bribes to support the trust vote in Parliament. But their efforts back-fired! Not only did they fail to postpone the voting, it was seen as evidence of the depths to which our leaders have sunk rather than as evidence of bribery. For a watching, incredulous nation, Parliamentary democracy touched a new nadir.

But now that the political circus that held us in thrall through all of last week is over, it would be a fair assessment to say that what cut ordinary citizens to the quick was not so much the open horse-trading ��� we set very low standards for our politicians ��� but the fact that there seems to be so little we can do about it.

Yes, of course we might have an investigation into the allegations but we know nothing will come of it. It will meander for years without getting anywhere. In any case the CBI���s credibility is now so low (witness the allegations that it was armtwisting Mayawati) that it would be best if it were kept out altogether. Prospects that a public interest litigation (PIL) would fare any better are also remote, given the absurd position enunciated by the Supreme Court in the JMM bribery case that MPs cannot be prosecuted for their actions in Parliament (never mind that these might be a direct consequence of bribes received outside).

Does that mean we can do nothing to nail the guilty? Not quite. Even assuming cash transactions are only the tip of the iceberg, and politicians have become smarter over the years, so only a simple IOU is exchanged, there is no reason why the guilty cannot be nailed. This is where Nitish Kumar, the Bihar chief minister���s idea of a windfall tax on MPs who received bribes comes in. The suggestion was, doubtless, a dig at Amar Singh who has been lobbying for the imposition of a windfall tax on private oil companies (essentially Reliance Industries promoted by Mukesh Ambani and arch rival of Amar Singh���s good friend, Anil Ambani).

But the principle of using the tax system is sound. Better still, it can be done and by ordinary citizens. After all, some time or other the money has to be spent. And if, as reports say, the sums involved are huge, some of the money will have to come into the banking channel or will have to be spent on items that leave an audit trail.

In the JMM case back in 1991 it was difficult to establish an audit trail because records were not computerised. Things like the annual information return (AIR) did not exist. That is not the case today. AIRs have to be filed and, unlike income tax returns, have to be filed by recipients of cash, whether banks or mutual funds or real estate companies etc. There is a tax information network (TIN) in place, apart from which taxes like banking cash transaction tax and value added tax (VAT) make it difficult to hide transactions since tax set-offs have to be backed by documentary evidence.So if tax authorities want, they can catch the guilty. It is a different matter that I-T officials (people like you and I) are unwilling to do. Witness the Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal ruling that Mayawati���s grossly disproportionate assets are gifts from her supporters and hence do not fall under the category of taxable income!

The problem, to put it in a nutshell, and a rather unpleasant one at that, is MPs are not the only guilty ones. So are we all: on two counts ��� first, because a few of us want to try and change things (sully our hands?) by entering the rough and tumble of politics and two, because when we have a chance to nail the political class, we don���t! Remember, back in the 1930s, the notorious Al Capone was finally put behind bars in the US, not for his heinous crimes (these could not be proved), but for tax evasion! And by a jury consisting of ordinary citizens!